All work and lots of slay

Joss Whedon plots world domination for Buffy and his new vampire slayer

June 01, 2001|By Robert K. Elder, Tribune staff reporter.

Not bad for a dead girl.

Despite being killed off in this season's cliffhanger (maybe), "Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" universe keeps expanding. Not only is Buffy switching from the WB network to UPN next fall, the blond demon hunter has a host of new projects to keep her -- or rather, her creator, Joss Whedon -- busy.

The slayer will star in an upcoming animated series on the Fox Kids network, and there's a possible crossover series on the BBC starring Rupert Giles, Buffy's watcher (a sort of slayer teacher), in the works. With all that going on, it's a good bet that Whedon already has a clever scheme to resurrect Buffy on UPN next season.

In the meantime, though, Whedon is taking the vampire-slayer mythology into the future with "Fray," a comic book published this month by Dark Horse Comics.

Hollywood types writing comic books is nothing new. "Babylon 5" creator J. Michael Straczynski won over readers and critics with his neo-superhero take on "Rising Stars," while "Dogma" director Kevin Smith has had success with his stints writing "Daredevil," "Green Arrow" and his own "Jay and Silent Bob" comics.

So what took Whedon, a self-professed "comics geek," so long to get a slayer comic series in the works?

"The shows have sucked the very life out of me for a long time," says Whedon, without irony. "I've now got them under control to where I can think about doing other things."

"Fray" takes the vampire-slayer mythology from the television series and sets it in a crumbling, "Blade Runner"-like future. The eight-issue series revolves around a talented thief named Melaka Fray, who lives in a polluted world full of bizarre human mutants. In Whedon's version of the future, the concept of vampirism has been forgotten, and the undead, called "lurks," are thought of as just another sub-category of the mutant populace. But as a leader rises among the lurks and they begin to threaten humanity, Fray must come to terms with her destiny as a vampire slayer.

Originally, Whedon wanted to write a comic book for Faith, another character from the TV series. But he decided he didn't want any overlap between a comic-book Faith and her TV counterpart. Also, Whedon says, "I didn't feel comfortable creating a whole new thing."

The solution was "Fray," a world in which he could build on concepts he established on "Buffy" without interfering with his television story lines. Writing comics also allows Whedon to fulfill a childhood dream.

"When I was a kid, I was an insane comic fan," Whedon says. "I drew comic strips throughout my life -- badly, but doggedly. Only when I was in college did I become serious about film, forsaking all other mediums. Writing comics now, the nostalgia factor is enormous."

In the 1980s, Whedon quit reading comics when the superhero genre began to cater to adolescent power fantasies. Female characters began to look like Playboy bunnies and males were nothing but "muscles on muscles," Whedon says. However, stellar '90s comics such as Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" and Alan Moore's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" helped reawaken Whedon's enthusiasm for the genre.

"The medium I had given up on, I came back to and some of the best work I've ever seen is being done right now. So it's an exciting time," he says.

Whedon adds that comics have helped him hone his craft as a storyteller.

"It's a very beautiful way to tell a story . . . to see something so fantastical rendered so beautifully in under five years and $5 million," Whedon says. "It's also a really good way to understand the clarity of narrative. Being a comic-book geek has helped me become a better director, because [in both mediums] you're choosing the visual storytelling."

His foray into comics also appeals to the control freak in Whedon.

"I have a very clear vision of what everything should be," Whedon says. "The difference between me and a complete control freak is that a complete control freak has to do everything himself. If somebody is doing something right, I shut up."

For a control freak like Whedon, the negotiations with the fickle WB were excruciating. Last month, "Buffy" left the WB network after tense, prolonged negotiations between Whedon and WB over money. UPN picked up the show, but Whedon says the transition has been a struggle.

"I'm trying to keep my head down, not let my rage overtake me," Whedon says. "I didn't love being basically abandoned by my network; that wasn't fun. Ultimately, it's been very frustrating. I'm just trying to get past that because we've got season six to make, season three [of `Angel'] downstairs, and season one with the animated series. I'm just trying to tune out all that stuff, and focus on what's ahead."

What's ahead may include some feature-film directing. Whedon's affection for Marvel Comics' Iron Man has led him to talks with New Line Cinema about helming chrome dome's silver-screen debut. He's also co-writing the "Angel" comics and lending his talents to "Tales of the Slayer," an upcoming comic-book series chronicling the lives of vampire slayers throughout history. He's also thinking about writing more non-slayer comics.

"Now I want to build an empire, I love it. I'm looking into the idea of getting very heavily into comics, doing some original, non-Buffy based stuff," he says. "But I'm taking my time."

But would he be interesting in making "Fray" a television series?

"If people want to make it into a TV thing -- hey, cool. I'm not really thinking that far ahead. It could, it has characters I like," Whedon says. "With `Fray,' we're really opening up the mythos and really looking at it. But the mythos exists so we can tell emotional stories about growing up, and that's all."